SR’s editor compiled many thousands of notes for his books 'The Invisible Spirit' and 'The Broken Journey' on the life of Scotland between 1945 and 1999. Many of minor interest never found their way into print. For this daily series, he has rescued some of these abandoned scraps from the dustbin of history.

May 1964Depravity in the west end
A detective investigating the ‘drugs racket’ in Glasgow described a 4am raid on a house in Hillhead where he found 12 people in one room, 'including two coloured men and a doctor'. One man was 'pretty well stoned out of his mind and a woman was just as bad'. The detective recovered two packets of Indian hemp from a bed, as well as photographs of 'a nude book'.

The evil south
The convener of the Church of Scotland’s church and nation committee, Rev John R Gray, criticised the new TV channel, BBC2, informing the General Assembly that Sunday after Sunday passed without one mention of the Lord’s name or the Lord’s word. 'Evil communications in the south are in grave danger of corrupting our good manners in the north', he commented. The Rev J Miller Scott, London, said he hoped the idea would not go out from the Kirk that 'somehow there emanated from the capital of our land a kind of unfortunte and evil influence'. Scott added that he had worked in a Scottish parish for years, 'and saw more goings-on there on a Sabbath day' than he now saw in London. This remark was greeted with cries of dissent, followed by loud laughter when Gray responded: 'Mr Scott doesn’t yet know the places to look in London'.

Foul play
Rangers Football Club was legally banned from introducing a new rule which would have led to a reorganisation of Scottish football. Under the scheme, Berwick Rangers, Brechin City, Albion Rovers, Stranraer and Stenhousemuir would have ceased to be members of the Scottish Football League. I M Robertson QC said it was not known why these five clubs had been selected for exclusion. Rangers had circulated all members of the league (with the exception of the five) outlining the proposed reconstruction and guaranteeing them a place in the new set-up. Robertson called this ‘coercion’. The court agreed.